'Turner Diaries' vs. 'Camp of the Saints'

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Heh heh heh, aren't I shocking with my attention-getting un-PCness. Actually I'm interested in the nature of the 'dystopia' genre itself. People generally think sci-fi is a 'progressive' genre socially, but isn't alot of it 'Daily Mail'-style neuroses inflated to ridiculous levels? When does 'cautionary' > 'inflammatory'? Then again, what's worse, these types of 'novels of ideas'(i.e. baiting everybody) or the warm fuzzy type of sci-fi like 'Star Wars' (i.e. 'life would be so much simpler if everybody went back to Manicheanism') which unlike novels mentioned above doesn't even give people a hook to hang their objections on? (i.e., "You are taking this WAY too seriously! It's just unpretentious entertainment!" Can something be 'harmless' if everybody in the world has seen it and it develops a culture industry on its own?) Actually I just like discussions about deep meanings and ramifications in sci-fi because I dropped out of college halfway thru the first term and never got to waste hours and hours discussing this kind of shit in class

― dave q, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Re 'Atomised' - what do you think Houllebecq actually thought of A. Huxley? (Perhaps "He fucked up the world with new-age bullshit, but luckily the solution [i.e. saying 'fuck it' to actually fucking and cloning everybody] was in one of hius dystopias, poetic justice"?)

― dave q, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Problem with dystopian futures is that they nearly all seem based on merely one idea of the current age gone mad (consumerism, selfishness, nuclear proliferation) rather than thinking how everything extrapolated kind of keeps everything else in check. Take Minority Report - the pre-crime nonsense would have been interesting and important as a civil rights issue but it doesn't really effect how people live their lives...

― Pete, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I really want to see some of those apocalyptic fundamentalist Christian movies that always seem to star Michael York...

Dystopias - not dissimilar to someone banging on all the time abt how shit London is?

― Andrew L, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

We are living in a Victorian future dystopian city. Yikes!

― Pete, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

exit this roman shell!!

― mark s, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I hope Pete isn't suggesting that the precrime idea in Minority Report was meant to be about creating a dystopia? It's a brilliant conceit to address the idea of the ontological status of knowing something will happen, but convicting someone as if it has - as usual in Dick, the nature of reality. Dick's story cranks up and complicates this, but I've not seen the film so I don't know how much it tries to address such questions. Meaning that if Pete meant the film, as he probably did, I'm arguing from a position of complete ignorance. Still, never stopped me before...

― Martin Skidmore, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

five years pass...

Just bought Turner Diaries. Kinda disappointed 'cause it's 200 pages and I'm not sure I can deal with 200 pages of awful writing.

― libcrypt, Saturday, 5 April 2008 23:30 (eighteen years ago)

It's fun to skim but I can't really imagine reading it cover to cover.

― 31g, Saturday, 5 April 2008 23:43 (eighteen years ago)

My wife could polish it off in an hour but 3 hours later be unable to summarize the plot.

― libcrypt, Sunday, 6 April 2008 00:01 (eighteen years ago)

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